One giant pint for mankind: Beer designed to be drunk in zero gravity by space tourists

Wherever man has ventured, beer has followed. Now, two Australian entrepreneurs hope that will include space. The pair have developed a full-bodied brew they believe can stand up to the trials of being drunk in zero gravity.

Problems faced by astronauts include swelling of the tongue with a loss of taste sensation, but it is hoped that space engineers have developed the perfect beer to counter this.

Jaron Mitchell, who owns the 4 Pines Brewing Company, a microbrewery, said: It's going to be the first beer that will be specifically designed to be drunk in zero gravity with upcoming space tourism.'

Scroll down to see the beer being tested in zero gravity conditions

Frontier beer: 4 Pines Stout is designed to be drunk in space, with a fuller flavour to counter the loss of taste suffered by astronauts

Mr Mitchell and Jason Held, at space engineering firm Saber Astronautics Australia, have developed the Vostok 4 Pines Stout, which they aim to take where no beer has gone before.

They believe they are ahead of the curve with Russians already taking mega-rich tourists into space and Richard Branson building the infrastructure for his own space tourism business - Virgin Galactic.

Mr Mitchell and Mr Held decided that a full-bodied, flavoursome, stout-style beer would work best to counter the loss of taste sensation that takes place when the tongue swells in space.

'Your face puffs out a little bit, your tongue swells up a little bit - it's not extreme, but kind of like having a bad head cold,' Mr Held said.

'So we wanted to have a flavour that would be strong enough, that would punch through that.'

Beer testing in zero gravity is quite difficult, but someone's got to do it

Knock it back: The tester rises to the challenge of keeping the bottle to his mouth

Once the prototype was developed it was tested on a zero gravity flight over Florida by a microgravity expert from the non-profit organisation Astronauts4Hire as a test subject.

Throughout the test flight the expert drank almost a litre of the beer despite the challenges of keeping the bottle to his mouth and getting the beer to pour out.

Mr Held said: 'If you look at a beer glass, you've got gravity pulling the liquid down and you have surface tension pulling the liquid to the side.

'So if you drink, it's very easy... the beer goes right up to the edge of the glass and then comes down. In space this isn't quite so easy because there is no gravity pulling the liquid down.'

With only surface tension operating in space, this means a glass can be turned over and the liquid will still stay in.

Mission accomplished: The tester manages to drink almost a litre of beer despite the difficulties of zero gravity

Mr Held said: 'You could see in the flight experiment where the test subject was flying and he was trying to get the liquid down his mouth.

'He is really having to shake it as he drinks it.'

He said a different container for the beer would have to be designed.

While tests showed that the recipe is suitable for space, more experiments are planned - including the actual impact on the body of alcohol drunk in low gravity, given that even plane flights change how alcohol is absorbed.

There is also the problem of carbonation and burping. On Earth, due to gravity acting on the stomach, the gas and liquid in the beer separate. However, in space, they come up together in what is called a wet burp. That, explained Mr Held, can be very uncomfortable.

This means a space beer must be low in carbonation.

'At the end of the day you could have a beer with no bubbles,' said Mr Held. 'But it doesn't taste very good because it's really just an alcoholic tea. We didn't want to do that to the astronauts.'

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Australian brewers aim to tackle the final frontier with space-age beer: Vostok 4 Pines Stout